Customer Reviews

Gutenberg and the Impact of Printing

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Any development to where we are now in reading and writing began with Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany with his invention of moveable type. Stephan Fussel produced this beautiful book on the Great Man in German. It was translated by Douglas Martin. Gutenberg, about whom there is no actual birth date, is considered to have come of age in 1420 when he is mentioned in connection with the division of his father's estate. Although there are gaps in his life, in 1450 he took out a loan and that year, he could set up and print broadsides and books.

In 1999, a team of American journalists voted Gutenberg to be "Man of the Millenium" since via his invention, he set up "the conditions for all other intellectual, political or religious changes in the centuries ahead." (Foreward, p. 7)

We take everything for granted, reading, writing, the computer and its derivatives. Try to imagine a time before moveable type created the mass printing of books when knowledge was in the hands of a privileged few and not democratized. And still, it would take a couple of centuries before books could be afforded by the "common" man.

I simply cannot stress enough the importance of Gutenberg. He also had a strong character, spending more than his money allowed to create and carry on with his invention; moving forward in his passion while debtors chased him continually and tried to shut him down. But nothing could dissuade him from continuing.

The edition itself was printed in Burlington, Vermont by Ashgate Publishing in 2003. If you like to have a look at old manuscripts, you'll get your fill here. There are several plates throughout of works first published, such as: the 48-line Bible and on to plates of works produced in the 16th Century in their original fonts and languages.

The production of the book by Ashgate is a masterpiece as well as historical. It has an honoured place among the books of my library.